John Thomas Idlet

John Thomas Idlet (John Thomas) (December 31, 1930 – March 29, 2002) was an American Beat poet who wrote sporadically and had an aversion to publishing his work. Charles Bukowski called him "the best unread poet in America." His father later committed suicide. After his discharge in 1954, he married, had children and worked as a taxi driver, psychiatric orderly and city worker, while writing never completed novels. Despite a hatred of computers, he later became a computer programmer. Menus were planned based on the amount of money gathered in a gallon jar by tourists who had ogled the beatniks during the day. Four years later Thomas published Epopoeia and the Decay of Satire which consisted of the same works, except that some of the poems in the first collection had been deleted from the second. In 2007, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department settled a lawsuit brought by his widow for $475,000. The lawsuit alleged that the prison system did not provide him adequate medical care, including failing to have him seen by a doctor despite evident poor health.

Legacy Thomas's poetry was praised for its grace and clarity, and he was an exceptional reader of his own work. He was influenced by Ezra Pound, the Chinese poet Li Po, and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. His poetry demonstrated his wide reading and immense imagination in spare, uncluttered forms. He was an exacting and ruthless critic of the work of others, which made him unpopular with others at times. Neeli Cherkovski described him as "by far the greatest underground poet in Los Angeles for the last 35, 40 years". Poet and editor Paul Vangelisti, who knew him well, remembered that "He was a gadfly in a time of self-mythologies. John made us understand what's going on inside the mind can have nothing to do with what's going on outside. John made no bones." "

Poetry Epopoeia and the Decay of Satire. Los Angeles: Red Hill Press, 1976. Abandoned Latitudes: New Writing by Three Los Angeles Poets, Los Angeles: Invisible City/Red Hill Press (1983) The Book of Sleep. John Thomas and Philomene Long. Momentum Press, 1991. "You'll Despise Me For this, But I'm Going To Say It Anyway" contained in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1999. Feeding The Animal. Poetry by John Thomas. Lummox Press, 2001. Our Life: The One Secret, Philomene, That Surprises Death. Audio recording. Produced by Raven Productions. CD Amazon, 2002. The Selected Poems and Prose of John Thomas. Venice, CA. Raven Productions / Press. www.raven-productions.com, 2011.